In the last few years we have seen private companies, nonprofit institutions and individual citizens look to bankroll their space themed projects via crowdfunding, some of which have been very successful. Now crowdfunding these projects can be done in several different ways. Some are purely based on donations, while others on rewards. More recently we have seen some equity investments as well through campaigns.
Rewards based campaigns tend to be the more popular ones. As they have great rewards for people who support them. Participating in unexplored territories, something exciting and worthwhile for people. These missions can vary of course, it could be a project to drill the moon and bring samples. Or in another example an advanced telescope to look for alien life around other stars. There’s no wonder that these kind of missions bring excitement to people.
The major platforms like kickstarter and indiegogo house many of these campaigns. But more recently niche platforms like orbitmuse have also opened up. Potential is huge in terms of the kind of funds that can be raised and to support great projects for human exploration. The global Space industry forecasts to grow from $390 billion in 2013 to $635 billion by 2030. There are also self-started initiatives, where some organisations or individuals will run campaigns directly off their websites, bypassing any third party platforms.
You may ask why now and will the trend continue? Most likely yes, crowdfunding and space exploration will grow ever stronger in the future. In the 10-20 years we have seen a major drop in terms of government sponsored funding, with the largest space agencies such as NASA for example. They simply have not been able to sustain the same funding as from the early space races. With crowdfunding people can directly get involved in the initiatives they care about and in this example space exploration. They have ability to change and impact the world with some of these projects.